Octavia E Butler Adulthood Rites
Publisher - Headline
First Published – 1988
Price - £12.99 paperback £4.99 Kindle eBook
Lilith Iyapo has given birth to what looks like a normal human boy, Akin. But his genealogy is complicated and includes an alien race that rescued humanity from a devastating nuclear war. The price the Oankali exact is a high one - they are compelled to genetically merge their species with other races, drastically altering both in the process.
On a rehabilitated Earth, this new race is emerging, living alongside the 'pure' humans who choose to resist the aliens and the salvation they offer. These resisters are sterilized so that they cannot reproduce the genetic defect that drives humanity to destroy itself.
When the resisters kidnap young Akin, the Oankali choose to leave the child with his captors. Will Akin give the resisters back their fertility and freedom, even though they will only destroy themselves again?
One of the most interesting parts of science fiction is the ability to give us perspectives that are not human. Sometimes writers use aliens to give us a human perspective we don’t see the concept of writing the other can be fraught as there is a danger of just creating one stereotypical race. The idea of one single planet all who act the same may have been quite novel but increasingly realising that like our own society a homogenous approach to life is highly unlikely. In the second part of the Xenogenesis/Lilith’s Brood trilogy Octavia E Butler moves on from a human perspective of aliens to one where a unique character gets to explore the pros and cons of both human and alien society.
This tale moves from the main human character of Lilith to one of her children Akin. Alien is an Oankali Human construct (child) looks like a human baby bar a strange alien tongue that can sample anything and a ability to talk and comprehend adult subjects fairly instantly after being born. Akin grows initially in the Oankali settlements where humans and their alien recreators mix and progress a new society but increasingly Akin is fascinated by the humans who openly rebelled against the idea of the being partly controlled by Oankali (the new humans cannot have children themselves and require a form of mixed pairing) and who openly wish to recreate their own human community that they can remember. Then Akin is taken by the resisters who hunger to try and have children of their own. Akin spends time to understand the humans on their own terms their flaws and benefits. As he becomes an adult he wonders if the Oankali policy is the right thing to do. Much SF can be humans are great or terrible as are aliens this level of nuance is for me much more interesting to explore.
This is a really ambitious story and I think is really successful for most of the part. Butler in Akin creates a really unusual and compelling character a child with the mind of an adult who can look dispassionately at both the worlds he comes from. His status as a child helps people overlook his background but his intelligence allows him to come to his own conclusions. If Lilith’s tale was learning about to find a balance and see humanity’s failings, then here we have a reversal in targets. Despite the Resisters’ regular bouts of violence, intolerance to the children who don’t look human (including proposing mutilation on the head tentacles that some of the children they’ve kidnapped have) and general unpleasantness we also see mercy and kindness in the group especially as he challenges their desire to kidnap and imprison children and see Akin himself as a person. Are humans still doomed is the big question of the story.
Whereas in the first book the Oankali could be seen as saviours here Butler shows they have a very paternalistic attitude to humanity with a downside. The Oakanli are ultimately interested in human genes and as they evolve the species with human-Oankali constructs the long-term view is to leave the planet taking all the key resources and finding new races to merge or gene trade with. That they have taken the decision to limit’s human ability to reproduce and control the humans because they don’t believe on their own human can survive as they’re not capable of resisting their worse natures. Akin’s journey is both to see if humanity is as bad as he was told and also to decide how he can help the situation setting up a new and unexpected direction for both groups.
On both sides there are arguments used to justify slavery and control although here with a wider spectrum on overall human impulses than just racism but it’s hard to not note this theme that has run in all the books to date. On top of that there is again a relationship between someone controlling someone else and then seeing reversals between the characters. Again, we see a theme of genetics and creating the next form of human life with more powers and abilities lurks in the background but for me this feels a step forward compared to the looser and variable quality of the Patternist series.
It’s quite relaxed in pace and at one stage has a twenty-year time jump but the finale is open ended and also quite surprising setting up a final tale which at this point I cannot guess where we are going. It is quite low key there are not epic battles and speech es but much more a novel exploring attitudes and approaches leaving a lot to the reader to digest and reach their own conclusions but it’s the kind of intelligent science fiction I enjoy reading. My attention to Imago the finale is calling!
